Banner photo by Ruben Hopwood
What is spiritually integrated psychotherapy?
Spiritually integrated psychotherapy involves the therapist and client work collaboratively to invite in, explore, and include the client’s spirituality, beliefs, religious and spiritual practices, experiences, and values into mental health treatment. It is based in traditional talk therapy and intentionally invites in a person’s whole self and value system into treatment to support healing, understanding, and resilience.
The importance of including a client’s spirituality and/or religious beliefs into mental health treatment to improve recovery and resilience are not new concepts. This is an important area of mental health care whose effectiveness is well documented through over four decades of research and literature by scholars such as Kenneth I. Pargament, Margreet R. de Vries-Schot, Harold G. Koenig, and others.
Basically, spiritually integrated psychotherapy is the practice of purposefully exploring clients’ spiritual and/or religious belief systems, practices, experiences, and worldviews in the context of therapy. Spiritually integrated therapy can support a more holistic approach to restoration of health and creating well-being.
The therapist can help notice and integrate a client’s values and discover the meaning that arises in relation to a person’s experiences with religion and spirituality in their personal lives, their past, and within the culture or society. Sometimes these experiences involve being hurt by organized religious groups or beliefs. Sometimes these experiences include supports and life-sustaining communities of belonging. Sometimes these experiences are a confusing mixture of both these things and more. Knowing a client’s experiences of spirituality and faith communities, and any connection to their core values and beliefs about life, their purpose, and their interpretation of events in their lives is important to adequately support self-exploration and change ineffective patterns of behavior and distortions that may challenge self-agency and healing.
Historically, many mental health professionals have left client spirituality out of therapy. Very few mental health graduate training programs include guidance on how to fully include a client’s spirituality in therapy. Some mental health professionals and approaches may even be hostile toward a client’s beliefs, spirituality, or religious practices. A few clinicians may even scoff at or devalue the role and importance of spirituality in a client’s life. This approach can lead to unnecessary distress in the client and poor outcomes from therapy.
I help mental health professionals learn how to include and utilize insights and possible strengths available within therapy by learning how to competently and non-judgmentally invite a client’s experiences and practices of spirituality into psychotherapy.
How do you help therapists learn this skill?
I have specialized education and training in spiritually integrated psychotherapy and I am passionate about helping colleagues become competent and comfortable talking about spirituality in the lives of their clients.
I work together with mental health professionals to help them learn how to ask clients about spirituality, faith, and religious practices in respectful and sensitive ways. I help clinicians learn to recognize places where they and the client are inviting in or hindering strengths available for improvement based in the spirituality in the person’s life. I work collaboratively with the therapist to identify and reframe some of the communication happening between therapist and client to take conversations deeper, to improve understanding and insights, and to work with sensitive and important facets of beliefs that influence the individual and their life-choices and actions.
I provide peer support one-to-one and group consultation to mental health professionals to improve on and learn skills of assessing and integrating clients’ spiritual, religious, and existential concerns in psychotherapy. I work with clinicians over time or in one-time seminars to increase their knowledge and awareness of the spiritual dynamics in their client’s lives and how it affects therapeutic outcomes and resilience.
Become more comfortable with client spirituality. ask yourself:
How do I feel when clients want to talk about spiritual practices, faith, or religion?
How might I invite or inhibit a client from bringing their spiritual beliefs and practices into the work I do with them?
Do I know what my client's values and self-worth are based in or what informs their choices?
Do I already use any spiritual and religious practices in treatment (Hint: centering, meditation, forgiveness, acceptance, empathy, compassion, breathing, journaling, and etc.)?
Do I ask clients about their spiritual lives, beliefs, experiences, history, struggles, or wounds?
Do I talk with clients about what makes their lives meaningful or gives them purpose or reason to live?
Do I know how to help clients wrestle with the existential questions they bring with them to therapy? (e.g., Why am I here? What is my purpose? Why do bad things happen? What happens after death?)
Do I feel like spiritual practices are too personal to ask about in therapy or not rational enough to be helpful or lead to real and lasting results?
Do I think that I am not religious so I cannot help anyone examine religion or spirituality in their lives?
Do I assume that if spirituality is important enough, the client will bring it up spontaneously?
